Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Westword
Complaints of substandard health care in the Colorado prison system are nothing new, but a newly filed lawsuit by one inmate, alleging that he was neglected in his cell while vomiting blood for three days, makes for particularly interesting reading.
For one thing, Matt Mallory's federal suit was filed by University of Denver law students led by supervising attorneys Brittany Glidden and Laura Rovner -- the same team that's taking on the state system over treatment of mentally ill inmate Troy Anderson . Rovner, Glidden and company are also challenging federal prisoner Thomas Silverstein's 26-plus years of solitary confinement.
Mallory's complaint also presents a detailed account of the deadly mix of over-prescribing, misdiagnosing and profound indifference that constitutes medical care in the Colorado Department of Corrections -- and in his version, contributed to a gastrointestinal bleed that was then simply ignored
His attorneys say DOC personnel provided Mallory with "copious amounts" of Ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatory drugs after a back injury two years ago -- despite a 2005 medical audit that indicated the system was over-prescribing such drugs, with little attention to their side effects, including ulcers and GI damage. When Mallory began vomiting blood in his cell last fall, he claims he was told to "put a wet washcloth on his head" until medical staff could get around to seeing him.
But no doctor ever came. After two days of vomiting, Mallory claims he was "examined" by a nurse "through the small opening in the steel pod door." The nurse told him he could have the swine flu and suggested a liquid diet. (Bloody vomit, Mallory's complaint notes, is not a flu symptom.)
The following day, the complaint continues, Mallory was too weak to go to the cell door to get his food. An officer told him, "This place isn't like Burger King where you can have it your way." Mallory collapsed trying to reach his food -- and ultimately ended up being taken to one hospital, then another, where he was found to have "a massive upper gastrointestinal bleed secondary to duodenal ulcer, profound anemia, and hypovolemic seizures."